1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to (1) a recording medium such an optical disk on which data of different types with different application purposes, e.g., compressed moving picture data, audio data, character data, game programs, and so on, are recorded, (2) a recording apparatus for recording data on the recording medium, (3) a recording method of recording data on the recording medium, (4) a reproduction apparatus for reproducing data from the recording medium, and (4) a reproduction method for reproducing data from the recording medium.
More specifically, the present invention relates to an improvement of a parental control in which reproduction or presentation of part of or all of data recorded on the recording medium is restricted by a provider of the data or by a user of the data.
Further, the present invention relates to a parental control for a broadcasting or communication system by which data of different types with different application purposes, e.g., compressed moving picture data, audio data, character data, game programs, and so on, are broadcasted or transmitted.
2. Description of the Related Art
Optical disk reproduction apparatuses which can cope with moving pictures have recently been developed. These apparatuses are designed to reproduce data from an optical disk on which picture data, audio data, and the like are recorded as digital data. Various types of reproduction software for, e.g., movies and karaoke systems are expected to be provided. Nationality, religion, and age restrictions are imposed on some of these pieces of software. For example, in the U.S.A, movies are classified into movies which everybody can see, movies which minors can see only with their parents, movies which minors above 13 years old can see only with their parents, R-rated movies, and X-rated movies.
Audiences are restricted depending on the contents of software, or audiences allowed to partly listen to or watch software are restricted depending on pictures in this manner. A scheme for such restriction is called "parental control." Conventionally, determination on parental control and execution of restriction on listening/watching depend only on the users of software. For this reason, it is hard to reliably execute restriction on listening/watching of software which is subjected to parental control.
As described above, according to the conventional form of listening to or watching software, a user may see a restricted picture unintentionally or intentionally as long as he/she has the software. Therefore, a method of performing reliable parental control needs to be developed.